


The Voyage of the Yonghy-Bonghy-Bo

by anahita



Category: Lewis (TV)
Genre: Break Up, Fix-It, Hurt/Comfort, Kidnapping, M/M, Makeup, Post-Canon, Starvation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-04
Updated: 2018-10-04
Packaged: 2019-07-24 23:51:50
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,062
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16185767
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anahita/pseuds/anahita
Summary: Lewis never knew afterwards where they’d been when the call came in. He never remembered what he’d been doing: taking a picture of Laura or maybe sitting with his back to a sunset, somewhere near Mitre Peak. They’d been a month into their trip. He took a boat, took a car, drove all night on the highway, and out to Gore airport, caught the first flight to Dunedin and from there to Oxford.





	The Voyage of the Yonghy-Bonghy-Bo

Lewis never knew afterwards where they’d been when the call came in. He never remembered what he’d been doing: taking a picture of Laura or maybe sitting with his back to a sunset, somewhere near Mitre Peak. They’d been a month into their trip. He took a boat, took a car, drove all night on the highway, and out to Gore airport, caught the first flight to Dunedin, and then from there to Oxford. He had two layovers on the way and by the end only a passing grip on his sanity kept him from shouting at total strangers.

He had left Laura stranded on the shore of Mitford Sound which was an added anxiety. “Are you okay?” he texted her from Christchurch but of course she didn’t reply. The signals were terrible out near Mitford Sound. It was a miracle that Innocent’s call had even connected. He forced himself to sleep on the last lag of the journey. He would need to be sharp when he got to Oxford, but as soon as he landed the last forty hours hit him in one go and he staggered to the arrivals lounge. There was a PC waiting for him with a sign that read LEWIS. He felt a sudden anger where there should have been loss and it woke him from the daze. They didn’t talk in the car as they drove to the station.

“Ma’am?” Lewis asked as soon as he got to Innocent’s office. He didn’t know what he would do if they had found him while he was in a plane, found him in the river, in the bushes of the Botanical Gardens or any of the other places where they had trudged to and fro to anonymous bodies buried or prone.

Innocent shook her head.

“I can’t say it’s good to see you under the circumstances,” Innocent said.

“How did this happen, ma’am?” Lewis said with that anger coming over his body again in wave after wave. “Where is he? Where is he?”

“Let’s find out,” Innocent said briskly.

“He was last seen a week ago heading out of the station,” DI Samson said to Lewis. He showed him the pictures from the CCTV camera. There was his James getting into the car. “He never got home.”

“He was working on a murder investigation?” Lewis said.

“It’s a double homicide,” Innocent said. They stared at the dead bodies posted on the white board. “It seemed clear-cut enough.”

“Hathaway brought in the prime suspect,” Samson said and pointed to the photograph of a disgruntled looking grocery store attendant. “A Mr. Steve Jameson. He knew both Ms. Hill and Mr. Jones—the victims—from back in his school days at Oxford, had a feud going, and believed they plotted to destroy his career as chemist. He’d been working at the grocery store where they both regularly shopped and had no alibi for the night of the murders.”

“I want to talk to this Steve Jameson,” Lewis said. “I also want all the files on this murder investigation.”

“I don’t think that Hathaway’s disappearance has anything to do with these murders,” Samson said with a shake of his head. “We’ve already worked that angle and nothing’s panned out.”

“I still want to have a look. I also want to know exactly what James was doing, who he was seeing, where he was that last day.”

“You know him best,” Samson shrugged.

“But I wasn’t here, man!”

“Lewis,” Innocent said in a warning voice.

“Sorry, ma’am,” Lewis rubbed a hand on his face.

“I know you’re tired but remember this is stressful for all of us,” Innocent said. “I need you working together with the entire team on this. I called you because the more time goes by the worse the chances—Well, you know the statistics. I thought you were the best man to find James and to bring him home. I need you to keep a cool head and temper. Find him, gentlemen.”

“Ma’am.”

“Ma’am.”

 

Lewis set up in a temporary office. He read the report on James movements the day he disappeared, it seemed pretty routine from what he knew of his habits, except for one entry about James visiting a psychiatrist’s office. “Lizzie,” Lewis called out and she appeared after a moment. “What’s this about James visiting a—a psychiatrist?”

“That surprised me as well,” Lizzie said. “I went to talk to her—a Dr. Yusuf—and apparently he’s a patient of hers.”

“Really?”

“Three years now.”

“I didn’t know.”

“He never really talks about himself, does he?”

“What did she say?”

“Sir?”

“This Dr. Yusuf, what did she say about why James was there?”

“It was his regular Tuesday appointment.”

“Did she say anything about his state of mind? Anything like that?”

“Doctor-Patient confidentiality.”

“Right.”

The rest of the entries didn’t surprise him: a swim, early morning coffee run, cigarette break, interviews with the victims families, cigarette break, coffee run. “Not a happy man,” Lewis had said a long time ago when investigating the murder of a Lewis Carroll obsessed Professor who lived a similarly caffeine addicted existence (and lonely, too). If this were anyone else, anyone at all, he would be at least be exploring the possibility of a—he couldn’t even think it—a voluntary consignment into oblivion. He could not, even on no sleep and very little hope, believe that of James. DI Samson had tried to make him see it as a scenario but Lewis had dismissed it as politely as he could. His God-bothering James? No. Never. 

It was strange to read about the day James had lived while Lewis was in New Zealand. It made an awful ache appear near to the heart. It turned Oxford a foreign land and the foreign land he’d been exploring another world. He wanted to go back in a weird temporal longing to before, even those few moments in the airport when he left him, when they did not touch. Lewis had at least been then in the same space as him. It didn’t surprise him that it had taken, what James would say, a herculean effort to get back to Oxford from Mitford Sound. It made sense that his whole body felt his age. Lewis went back to the papers.

 

It’d been Lewis who had ended things between them. They had three months, just three months, and what highs and what lows. He’d never forget it. He had not known it could be like that between people, his marriage had not prepared him for it, how lonely he could be even when James was with him and how it felt when James left. They were still Sergeant and Inspector then.

They saw each other everyday at work but it was not enough. The nights together were not enough, and all the time he could feel James retreating from him. It left him chilled and they didn’t kiss enough to make up for it. James was silent about what he needed. It felt like he was forcing him sometimes to spend time with him. James was more poetry then person. It made Lewis angry and they had many fights.

“Just say what you mean, lad!” Lewis said.

“I am, I am,” James said.

It didn’t work at all but it was glorious. They were lovely in bed which seemed strange to Lewis in hindsight. It had all been new to him and James, too. “Do you like that?” James asked many questions in bed. Lewis was quiet. They wouldn’t argue for about an hour afterwards which was a benefit. They were same when there was a murder on the table but the sex lies of others left Lewis colder than usual. He could see himself in them. It was a pattern discernible to the expert eye. He was no good at lying to his family but James made it impossible to think about the future. It was obvious he didn’t feel there was a future. “We should stop,” Lewis had said. They had done so as soon as possible.

He told Laura about James but didn’t tell James before he got together with her. It all made him feel like a teenager when he really thought about it but they had both surprised him with their strangely twin serenity. He wasn’t sure what he’d have done in their place but he couldn’t say he’d be as sanguine. It was only later that he felt as if he had handled it all badly. He shouldn’t have told Laura. He should have warned James before kissing her.

It was not that Laura ever acted towards James in anyway that made her look like a jealous lover but it was a feeling he got between them when he walked in on them sitting together alone, if went to get them tea at Laura’s home or the drinks from the bar. What was it? He tried to pin it down while lying in bed with Laura but it slipped away from him. He just knew he’d done something about which he felt guilty. He was somehow the trouble. It would have been wonderful to not have felt anything for James but at the same time he could never regret it. He maybe never should’ve touched Laura after that but it had happened.

It had all come crashing down in Mitford Sound.

“It’s James,” Lewis had said.

She had not stopped him.

Why hadn't she returned with him? He knew she thought a great deal of James and that it was mutual. He’d not questioned that he must return alone. He could not stand at the moment anyone else sharing his anxiety or his anger. He didn’t want them to touch him. He didn’t care for words.

“Coffee?” Lizzie said from the doorway and he nodded. He would hide his face if he could but he sat in the open and speed read all the information on the murders James was investigating before he disappeared.

Innocent had been right. It seemed a clear-cut case. Steve Jameson was looking likely and only a damning instinct made Lewis squint at the details that seemed off. Steve Jameson was lying but not about being a murderer. James had caught the same scent and stayed all night on Tuesday to go over the case even though he should have headed home early after bringing Jameson in for the murders. 

“I want to see Steve Jameson,” Lewis said to Lizzie.

“Alright.”

 

Jameson was a mousy man with a little smile.

“Found your DI yet?” Jameson said. Lewis thought it rather reckless. He must have known he was playing here with fire. The whole police station was agitated about James’ disappearance.

“I’d be careful with me, man,” Lewis already felt calmer. “I’m not as nice as me old sergeant.”

“Sergeant?”

“We all start somewhere, don’t we? I heard you used to work for a fancy lab in London before you were fired for stealing. It seems quite a fall to land as a grocery clerk at Sainsbury—”

“It wasn’t a fall. I was pushed.”

“—and why not work in a Sainsbury in London? Why come here?”

“I didn’t move here just to work at the Sainsbury!”

“Why did you move here?”

“I told you—well, I told him. I moved here to take care of my sister. She’s sick and needs help.”

“What does she have?”

“What?”

“What’s her condition?”

“She has MS. Multiple sclerosis.”

“I’m sorry.”

“No, you’re not.”

“There’s a nurse to look after her?”

“Kelly.”

“—and your sister needs constant care?”

“She’s gone blind. Kelly looks after her when I’m not there.”

“This nurse comes in how often?”

“She’s there five days a week.”

“She stays until you get home from work?”

“Yes.”

“—and the day of the murders you say you were alone at home with your sister?”

“It was Kelly’s holiday.”

“—but your sister says she heard voices downstairs. It was voices in plural.”

“That was the TV.”

“The TV downstairs?”

“Well—”

“DI Hathaway walked through your living room—downstairs—and noted that your furniture was turned to a blank wall. He wrote quote ‘no TV.’”

“I sent it to the shop for repairs.”

“Jameson, lad, you’re helping no one by lying about being alone on the night in question. We have you for two murders—”

“Wait a minute.”

“They shopped in your store, man. There’s that old feud.”

“I didn’t know they came to the bloody store! I never saw them!”

“Tell me who you were with! Tell me right now.”

“I was with Kelly all night. We’ve been seeing each other but she’s married. Her husband is violent and I’m afraid for her—”

“We’ll have her confirm your alibi.”

“But!”

“Discreetly, man.”

Lizzie came to tell him Kelly had confirmed the alibi. “That’s that,” Lewis said and watched the daybreak over Oxford. Lewis handed Jameson his number and let him go.

“Now what?” Lizzie said.

“I need to know what James was thinking,” Lewis said to her.

She looked helpless.

“I think he knew Jameson wasn’t the killer.”

“He had a lead?”

“I believe he did.”

“We’ll find it.”

 

It was about an hour later that Innocent came to send him away. She had just come in to work and he had been there all night.

“Robbie, please,” Innocent pointed to the door.

He didn’t know at first where he would go. There was the home, but suddenly he knew he had to go to James’ apartment. Lizzie drove him there and let him in.

“See you in,” Lizzie checked her phone, “say five hours?”

“That will do.”

He took a shower in James’ bathroom and slept deeply. He passed into sleep the way people pass into death, he thought later, the days before hitting him like an open fist. He felt worse than ever when he woke with the alarm. “Are you okay?” Laura still had not replied. He was worried about both of them. How was it possible to feel like this and still—still—he was here. He looked around James’ apartment for a hint of what the bright lad had figured out about their double homicide. There was a heap of books by the bed. Lewis flipped through them one by one but found no loose paper stuck inside with the name of a killer written in James’ scribbly hand. He rarely wrote on the books which surprised Lewis. He would have thought James was someone whose favorite lines were underlined and marginalia thickly in the borders, his irreverent thoughts, and facetious commentary. Lewis had never looked inside James’ books before, not like this, not while missing him. He wished for his warm voice. The things Lewis had called James at the worst of it! It had seemed poetry was a wall between them. “And miles around they'll say that I/Am quite myself again,” James had whispered the day after Lewis said they should end it. They had slept together every night from that day to two weeks later when suddenly James said goodbye at the door of their office rather than head on home with Lewis. That was how it was. It was James, really, who had set the time on them.

There was no hint of him in his bedside books. Lewis knew he was reading them because of creases and sighs in between the covers, well-thumbed pages, and tea stains. Lewis ran his fingers down the pages of _A Shropshire Lad_ until suddenly coming on some familiar words. 

Oh, when I was in love with you

Then I was clean and brave,

And miles around the wonder grew

How well did I behave.

And now the fancy passes by

And nothing will remain,

And miles around they'll say that I

Am quite myself again.

 

It was late that afternoon when Lewis finally made it to James’ psychiatrist. She worked in a two-story building with other offices. She had a patient with her when he got there but the receptionist told him the appointment would be ending in a moment and so he waited. He had no concentration for the magazines, his phone was distractingly silent, and the three cups of coffee he had had were sitting in his stomach heavily. He was staring blankly at a wall when he looked up and recognized the man talking to the receptionist.

“Dr. Gansa?” Lewis got up. They shook hands.

“How’re you?” Dr. Gansa looked the same as when he had last seen him reading the Jumblies by his wife’s hospital bedside. They went to sea in a Sieve, they did. In a Sieve they went to sea. He had thought about that case more than most he had worked. He felt sorry for what had happened to the Gansas. He had misunderstood this man terribly, and suddenly it felt good to see him even amid the horror of the last few days.

“Are you here to see Dr. Yusuf?” Dr. Gansa glanced at her door.

“I’m here on an inquiry,” Lewis did not want to say anything about James. He wanted to pretend for a moment that James was waiting for him in the office, that it was those days again, and nothing had changed.

“I wish you luck,” Dr. Gansa was turning away.

“Do you work here as well, Doctor?” Lewis said suddenly. “There’s many offices in this very building, right?”

“I share a receptionist with Dr. Yusuf.” Dr. Gansa put his hands in his pockets. “I’ve been away at a conference and she had my mail.”

“I wondered about your wife…”

“She’s still—I hope everyday to see her wake up.”

They said goodbye.

Dr. Yusuf wouldn’t tell him anything about James, but she recognized Lewis as soon as he walked in, and treated him with courtesy.

“He talks about you,” they chatted amicably enough for five minutes before Lewis felt the great disappointment of another dead end. He returned to the files. It was a week today that James had disappeared and their chances were slimmer than ever. The hope of finding him alive was slipping away. Lewis started at the beginning. What had James been thinking? He had known that Steve Jameson was not the killer. He had stayed at the office and looked through the victim records late into the night. He’d been going over the woman’s past like a hawk. There was something there that Lewis kept missing no matter how many times he looked over the information.

Ms. Hill had a history of stalking. She’d been known to follow men she admired for months from a distance. There was nothing that hinted at violent behavior but she could have escalated. That had been the first theory. They had thought she killed the man she was stalking, a Mr. Jones, and then herself, but the bullet wound in her head wasn’t self-inflicted. Ms. Hill hadn’t committed suicide but that did not rule out her being Mr. Jones’s killer.

“She killed him and then someone else killed her?” Lizzie stirred her tea.

Lewis always felt it helped to talk a case over with someone.

“It does sound rather far-fetched,” Lewis scratched behind his ear.

“It’s like how in comics you have a little fish being eaten by a bigger fish and then—”

“Then a shark comes and eats the bigger fish. Aye.”

They finally had something. James’ phone was found abandoned in a dumpster miles from his apartment. They searched the area door to door but found nothing.

“He’s here,” Lizzie said grimly but no one had any information.

The flashing police lights. The reluctant citizenry. His questions not enough, and he knew that he was looking at a puzzle up-side down. He was here, wasn’t he? James was somewhere in these very houses but it was impossible to find him. Why had the killer targeted James? They shouldn’t have known James. The people James had interviewed that last day all had strong alibis. DI Samson kept saying that James’ disappearance was unrelated to the murders but Lewis had a gut feeling he was on the right track with that at least.

It was in the end James’ love of poetry that saved him and also Lewis’ desperation.

Lewis was flipping through the book James had left under his desk. It was a slim little volume of Edward Lear’s work, and Lewis had dismissed it at first because Lizzie told him they had been working on a case involving a Spanish translator of Lear’s work a month before James’ disappearance. It was unlike James to forget to sort material in between cases. Lizzie confirmed it was James’ own copy and that she often saw him reading from it late at night. Lewis went past _the Jumblies_ , _the Owl and the Pussycat_ and stopped when he came across markings on the page. He knew now that James left the pages of books unlined from an extensive search of his library at home.

It was _the Courtship of the Yonghy-Bonghy-Bo_. He had underlined two names.

On the Coast of Coromandel

Where the early pumpkins blow,

In the middle of the woods

Lived the Yonghy-Bonghy-Bo.

Two old chairs, and half a candle,

One old jug without a handle--

These were all his worldly goods,

In the middle of the woods,

These were all his worldly goods,

Of the Yonghy-Bonghy-Bo,

Of the Yonghy-Bonghy-Bo.

Once, among the Bong-trees walking

Where the early pumpkins blow,

To a little heap of stones

Came the Yonghy-Bonghy-Bo.

There he heard a Lady talking,

To some milk-white Hens of Dorking--

"‘Tis the Lady Jingly Jones!

On that little heap of stones

Sits the Lady Jingly Jones!”

Said the Yonghy-Bonghy-Bo,

Said the Yonghy-Bonghy-Bo.

Lewis felt his whole body seize the way it did when he was onto something. “Jones, Jones, Jones,” he flipped through the pages until he saw that the Lady Jingly Jones of the poem was with a Mr. Jones from England which was why she had to turn away the Yonghy-Bonghy-Bo. “Here it is,” Lewis said aloud and read the whole poem closely again. There must be a third player, just as Lizzie and Lewis had theorized, possibly another man who had watched their Ms. Hill kill Mr. Jones and then killed her. There would be a hint of him somewhere in Ms. Hill’s files and somehow he’d know James, from something, and know to target him before he got too close to the truth.

Lewis went through the files again until a word jumped up at him.

“Lizzie,” he called out and she came in a hurry. “Find out who was Ms. Hill’s psychiatrist. It says here she saw him for two years after her last conviction for stalking. Who was it?”

“A Dr. Gansa,” said Lizzie after five minutes of searching.

“Aye, it would be,” Lewis dialed Innocent on his phone.

Dr. Gansa lived in the neighborhood where they found James’ phone. Innocent got a search warrant together as fast as possible. The police car ride he would never remember. The dread of finding James, the elation, reluctant knowledge that he would most likely be—and feeling the grief already as if it had been waiting in the wings to take over his sad old body. He walked through the doors after the scene had been secured. “There’s someone in the basement,” yelled a voice. Lewis walked past the hunched figure of Dr. Gansa. “He’s alive!” Lewis ran.

“James, James,” but they would not let Lewis touch him. He was carefully placed on a stretcher. Lewis rode in the ambulance. James’ eyes were closed. His face looked gaunt. He was starved and dehydrated and breathing shallowly. They inserted an IV into his arm. Lewis walked next to the stretcher but they shut the door in his face and took James into the emergency ward.

“You found him!” Laura finally texted him. He wondered how she knew and watched the walls.

“Ms. Hill was the third women Dr. Gansa had driven mad with that obsessive love,” Lizzie said. They were sitting together in the waiting room. “He was already being watched closely because of his involvement with that case you and DI Hathaway worked where his wife was hit by car, and when he realized his medical practice would be taken away—he needed the money for his wife’s care—he accidentally killed Ms. Hill when confronting her. She had texted him, you see, to tell him how she killed Mr. Jones for his love and he went to stop her but was too late.”

“And James?” Lewis coughed into a tissue.

“Wrong place wrong time,” Lizzie chewed rapidly on her sandwich. “Dr. Gansa saw him when he was visiting Dr. Yusuf and assumed he was investigating him. He kidnapped James when he was heading home and chained him in the basement right before his flight out to the conference.”

“Why didn’t he kill James?”

“He wasn’t really a killer. He couldn’t do it pre-mediated. I think he was hoping James would starve to death and he wouldn’t have to do anything.”

“Thank God,” Lewis said. “Thank God.”

“I thought you didn’t believe in God.”

“I don’t.”

They let him see James finally. Lewis had been reluctant to leave until he saw him at least. He still couldn’t believe they got him back. The grief that had hit his body in the police car to Dr. Gansa’s house still hadn’t left him. He was stuck in that moment, his surety that they were driving to James’ dead body, and the knowledge that he could not survive it. Not again. There was only so much that anyone could take in a life and he had reached his own limit.

James looked as if he had lost all the little weight he’d had. He was bones and bones. Lewis held his hand and talked to him. He had forgotten to ask what would happen to Mrs. Gansa now that her husband was going to jail. He tried to turn his mind off and just soak in the feeling of having James’ hand in his. It was something that had happened only twice, and both times when James had almost died. He wondered what that meant, that they had not held hands, even when they were doing all sorts of other things that made him blush to think about, as if he were some reluctant virgin and not a man of more than sixty. It hit you like that sometimes. He wondered what he would say when James opened his eyes. He would never again think ‘if’ when it came to James. He would work instead on his certainty, and when James opened his eyes then Lewis would say—what?

“Wake up, lad,” Lewis shook the hand in his gently.

“I’m not coming back,” Lewis kept trying to frame the text in a way that didn’t sound mad. How could he just leave her like this? He just knew that he could never again take the journey that had brought him back to Oxford: a boat, a car ride, a plane, another plane, another plane, and then a car from the airport. He would not do it again but he couldn’t say it to Laura over text. He tried calling her but she didn’t pick up the phone.

“Laura?” Innocent said from the doorway. “I’ve been keeping her updated.”

“You have, ma’am?”

“She’s been calling constantly,” Innocent came to peer down at James. “She was quite worried about James, you know.”

“Aye,” Lewis looked down at his phone again. It was not then a question of signals but the plain fact that she did not want to speak to him. He sent the text. 

He went back to James’ apartment and slept for almost ten hours. He called the hospital after upon waking for an update and they told him that they couldn’t tell him anything because he was not the next of kin.

“But they let me see him yesterday!” Lewis raged to Innocent.

“I told them to,” Innocent said.

She told him James was awake.

Lewis spent an hour just fiddling around with James’ things. He made a cup of tea and didn’t drink it. It suddenly seemed silly to have assumed possession of James’ place in his absence. He himself felt like the damned Yonghy-Bonghy-Bo with his two old chairs and half a candle. Lewis didn’t have even that much.

He cleaned after himself as best he could. He was delaying even though all he wanted was to see James awake. It was obvious to him what would happen. James would never give him the opening he had all that long ago when they’d fallen together. He would not do it again. It seemed miraculous that he’d ever had James. How had that happened? He couldn’t remember the steps they had taken. Lewis was now older, more worn and had less than nothing to offer. He couldn’t really see a way through.

He took a cab to the hospital.

 

“You saved me,” James said with a smile.

“Settle down,” Lewis said roughly and then sat with him while James ate food approved for someone who’d had nothing for a week. He watched him struggle with the spoon. They spoke very little but James kept glancing at him strangely.

“What is it?” Lewis said after he had been at it for a while.

“I can’t believe that you’re here,” James said after a moment.

“Where else?” Lewis drummed his fingers on the bed.

“New Zealand?” James said slowly.

“You got yourself in trouble, lad,” Lewis said. “I had to get you out.”

“How did you know where I was?” James stared at him in wonder. “Lizzie said something about a poem—but I don’t understand.”

“You left the clue, remember?” Lewis gave him a long look. “The Yonghy-Bonghy-Bo, underlined, and Lady Jingly Jones.”

“What?” James looked puzzled.

“The Edward Lear, man! It was under your desk.”

“What does that have to do with the case?”

“Mr. Jones was the victim and a Mr. Jones is in the poem as—” Lewis said loudly. “Are you telling me that was not a hint? Not you and your poetry inspired policing?”

“It sounds like it was _your_ poetry inspired policing to me, Robert.”

“I really thought you were leaving me a breadcrumb,” Lewis said slowly. “I looked through your books at home and none of them had notes or underlined words, only this one about the Yonghy-Bonghy-Bo.”

James fiddled with the spoon.

James was alright with Lewis staying in his apartment while he recovered. He just seemed puzzled. “What’s wrong with your place?” Lewis couldn’t tell him that it was over between him and Laura. He’d do it soon but not now. He wanted James to focus on himself and he wanted that ten-ton brain relaxed and recovering. They’d sort Lewis out soon enough. Lyn said his stuff was still in the same storage he’d dumped it when he moved in with Laura. She’d been taking care of that detail while he was in New Zealand. She, too, seemed puzzled by him but glad to have him back.

Lewis started looking quietly for a place. He spent visiting hours with James and then went apartment hunting. He filled the rest of his time sorting James’ books alphabetically. He needed something to do. It would also mean he knew exactly the shape and size of their first fight and that made him calm. He also started underlining James’ copy of A. E Housman’s _A Shropshire Lad_. That was not a fight waiting in the wings but a confession. He marked the line “And now the fancy passes by” with a question mark at the end. He wanted to know if it had passed.

Still nothing from Laura. He was forced to call Innocent for an update on her.

“Laura?” Innocent said faintly. “She’s in Christchurch now, isn’t she? Staying with a couple she met at Mitford Sound? Mrs. and Mr. Patel I believe. They’re from the city. Hospitable people, she said. Robbie? Is everything alright between you two?”

“No, ma’am.” Innocent became the first person he told, which was funny in its own way, but nothing he could laugh about. He was glad Laura was back in civilization.

 

James was finally released from the hospital. He was still weak as a kitten. The doctor said they had to watch he wasn’t infected with anything while he recovered. The nurse rolled James to the waiting car and Lizzie drove them to the apartment.

“I’ll see you,” Lizzie said with a smile and shook Lewis’ hand. She obviously thought he’d be leaving for New Zealand since James was home. Lewis did not correct her.

James needed help getting on the sofa. Lewis made them a cuppa and they settled in front of the TV.

“It was your note about Steve Jameson not having a TV downstairs that led me to ruling him out as a suspect,” Lewis said.

“It just seemed strange that all the furniture was pointed to a blank wall,” James said sleepily.

“You’d figured it out then that it wasn’t him?”

“Hmm,” James fell asleep.

James woke groggily in the late evening and had soup for dinner. His stomach still couldn’t take solid food without intense pain. James said that the window dripped water after it rained one evening and he survived by licking at the water on the wall. Lewis felt pain in his own chest just listening, and here they were unable to feed him anything better than some soup and a little bread.

“I’m alright, Robbie,” James said with a smile.

Lewis bent down over his own bowl. 

They had to share a bed that night. Lewis couldn’t sleep on the sofa and neither could James. They headed inside without a discussion. Lewis brushed his teeth while James read in bed. He seemed to still not to have noticed his rearranged books, which was just as well since he had no strength for a proper strop.

Lewis had left _A Shropshire Lad_ on James’ bedside table. He watched him from the doorway as James sleepily ran his fingers down the pages of the book. He was stripped down to his boxers and looked even more gaunt in the yellow light but lovely nonetheless, something from a painting, his eyes moving restlessly over the lines. Lewis got in bed with him. James put down the book. “Goodnight,” he clicked off the light.

Lewis couldn’t sleep that night. He turned as quietly as possible and stared out into the rest of the room. He turned again but towards James. James was breathing shallowly and it worried Lewis.

“James?” Lewis said in the quiet of 2:00 am.

James didn’t move but there was something about his face that made Lewis believe he was still awake.

“Lad? I have to tell you something.”

James opened his eyes and stared at the ceiling.

“Laura and I are done,” Lewis said. “It’s over.”

James turned to look at him then closed his eyes.

They had the fight the next day.

“What made you think you could rearrange my books just as you please,” James said after breakfast. “Did you even think I might have had them like that for a reason? _Sir_?”

James hadn’t sir’ed him in a while. It made Lewis nostalgic.

“They’re better this way,” Lewis said while sipping at his tea. “I can find what I want this way.”

“Is that right?”

“It is, aye.”

 

It was better that night for them. James moved into his arms and stayed the entire night. Lewis spent a long time just stroking his head. There was something soporific about the light coming in from the street below.

“What did you think you were about?” Lewis demanded.

“What?” James blinked.

“What’d you think you were doing disappearing like that?”

“I’m sorry, Robbie.”

“What if I hadn’t misunderstood that poem? I’d never have figured it out.”

“You’d have found me in any case.”

“I’m not sure about that, James. It just seemed such a clue that you’d underlined those names and that Mr. Jones was dead but now I see what utter nonsense it all was, only it led me to you.”

“I’m glad that it did,” James said drowsily. “You’re staying, then? You won’t go?”

“I’m staying.”

“You won’t leave?”

“I promise.”

**Author's Note:**

> I've used A. E. Housman's "XVIII. Oh, when I was in love with you," Edward Lear's "The Courtship of the Yonghy-Bonghy-Bo" and "The Jumblies."


End file.
